ose such powers as they originally possessed by despising, and
refusing to study, the results of great power of design in others. Their
knowledge, as far as it goes, being accurate, they are usually
presumptuous and self-conceited, and gradually become incapable of
admiring anything but what is like their own works. They see nothing in
the works of great designers but the faults, and do harm almost
incalculable in the European society of the present day by sneering at
the compositions of the greatest men of the earlier ages,[62] because
they do not absolutely tally with their own ideas of "Nature."

Sec. XLVII. The second form of error is when the men of design despise
facts. All noble design must deal with facts to a certain extent, for
there is no food for it but in nature. The best colorist invents best by
taking hints from natural colors; from birds, skies, or groups of
figures. And if, in the delight of inventing fantastic color and form
the truths of nature are wilfully neglected, the intellect becomes
comparatively decrepit, and that state of art results which we find
among the Chinese. The Greek designers delighted in the facts of the
human form, and became great in consequence; but the facts of lower
nature were disregarded by them, and their inferior ornament became,
therefore, dead and valueless.

Sec. XLVIII. The third form of error is when the men of facts envy design:
that is to say, when, having only imitative powers, they refuse to
employ those powers upon the visible world around them; but, having been
taught that composition is the end of art, strive to obtain the
inventive powers which nature has denied them, study nothing but the
works of reputed designers, and perish in a fungous growth of plagiarism
and laws of art.

Here was the great error of the beginning of this century; it is the
error of the meanest kind of men that employ themselves in painting, and
it is the most fatal of all, rendering those who fall into it utterly
useless, incapable of helping the world with either truth or fancy,
while, in all probability, they deceive it by base resemblances of both,
until it hardly recognizes truth or fancy when they really exist.

Sec. XLIX. The fourth form of error is when the men of design envy facts;
that is to say, when the temptation of closely imitating nature leads
them to forget their own proper ornamental function, and when they lose
the power of the composition for the sake of graphic tr